


The Lioness and her Dragon

by LunaRavenclaw9



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dealing with PTSD, Dragons, F/M, Fluff, Lions, Other, Post-War, Recovery, Unusual Friendships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:41:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22281277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaRavenclaw9/pseuds/LunaRavenclaw9
Summary: When two unlikely couples come together in the dragon sanctuary, magic is made. Life is never easy but finding love makes it worth it.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Charlie Weasley
Comments: 12
Kudos: 115





	The Lioness and her Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my alpha [noxsoulmate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxsoulmate), not only for helping inspire the plot bunny and hash out details of this story but also for making the pretty that goes along with it!!
> 
> Another big thank you to [ArielSakura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArielSakura) for taking time out of her busy schedule to help beta this for me! This story would not be what it is without them both and I will always be grateful for their help!!!
> 
> Go check out their pages because their writing is AMAZING!!!!!!!!
> 
> Any mistakes left are my own. And of course, I do not own any of the characters.

As he made his way through the dragon sanctuary, Charlie walked past his favourite enclosure. It was definitely an odd one but that was part of its appeal. As Charlie pulled himself up to sit on the fence, Athena the lion padded her way over to stare at him. She merely gave him a few slow blinks and after a lazy stretch, the feline turned away and went back to the den that every enclosure on the reserve contained. 

A small smile appeared as he watched Kratos, the fiercest Hungarian Horntail Charlie had known since he started working here, let out an impatient snort and lifted his wing so Athena could curl in along his flank. He tilted his head towards Charlie and glared in his direction. Wrapping Athena close beside him, he eventually laid his head down next to her, keeping a watchful eye over her as she drifted to sleep.

Athena had found her way to the sanctuary a few years ago, battered, underfed, and in need of a safe place to recover. Charlie wasn’t sure what happened to the poor beast, but she had flourished almost as soon as she was taken in by Charlie and his colleagues. 

As she slowly healed, Charlie could tell that though Athena was grateful for everything they provided her with, she didn’t want any human interaction. She had sent Gordo to the infirmary when he got too close while cleaning out her enclosure one afternoon. After that, some of the dragon tamers were hesitant to get near. These big, burly men would stare down a dragon in a rage, but a feline less than half that size turned them into scared fools.

Charlie didn’t mind. He took more of the shifts feeding and mucking the enclosures in her area. One evening, after a particularly challenging day with a new Hebridean Black, Charlie was on his way through the sanctuary to get back to his cabin. All he wanted was to take a shower and sleep for a week. As he had passed by Kratos’ enclosure, he heard purring, loud and rough in its persistence. 

Thinking that an odd noise to come from there, he snuck closer and quietly heaved himself up to peer over the fence. Nothing could have surprised him more than what he saw, even if the girl of his dreams had come up and kissed him right then and there.

Kratos, a dragon who learned at an early age to attack anything that came near him, was letting Athena rub her head along his shoulder. He even seemed to be enjoying it, evidenced by the way he lay there with his eyes half-closed, the only part of him moving was his tail flicking from side to side in lazy contentment.

Charlie must have made some noise as he shifted into a more comfortable position because he remembered how Kratos looked straight into his eyes. Tension immediately coiled through the dragon’s body. Kratos rocketed to his feet, unfurled his wings, and roared. 

When Athena saw Charlie, she ran to the far side of the fence and slipped through a loose board. Before Kratos could get riled up more, Charlie quickly dropped from his perch and out of his sight. Praying it would be enough. Kratos roared once more, but soon Charlie heard the heavy thud that indicated he had resumed his position on the ground. 

Sighing with relief, Charlie jogged over to Athena’s enclosure, which thankfully wasn’t very far. By the time he reached it, she was already in her den, her amber eyes glowing in the soft light of the lanterns that burned around the sanctuary.

Charlie knew he should have done something about the loose boards Athena was using to get in and out of the enclosures but he was also curious to see what went on between the two creatures. He decided to keep an eye on them and vowed to fix both fences if it seemed like Athena wasn’t the only one that could take advantage of the weakness. After murmuring a soft ‘goodnight’ to the lion, he started the long trek back to his cabin. Maybe with some rest, he could work out the puzzle these two had created for him. 

As the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months, Athena visited Kratos’ enclosure so much that the other workers at the sanctuary started to notice. Kratos could be seen romping around and chasing her, playing around as if he were a much younger dragon. Athena wasn’t as skittish or aggressive toward everyone anymore. She would often sit under Charlie’s spot. The place where he would prop himself up on their fence to eat his lunch and observe them. Once, she even let him get close enough to pat her flank as he was bringing their dinner.

These weren’t the only two broken beings around the sanctuary. There was another who found the beauty here to heal herself, mentally, for their healers had taken care of the physical damage she had suffered from.

The young woman who had stumbled onto their land a few months before Athena showed up; had been on the run from some of the few remaining rogue death eaters and had been lost in the Romanian wilderness until she happened upon the dragon sanctuary. It took weeks for her to recover enough to tell them some of what happened. She asked them to keep her location a secret until she was ready to face everyone again. Charlie knew there were things she was leaving out of her story but he didn’t push her to tell him; out of respect for her privacy.

Charlie found his eyes trained on her as much as they were on Kratos and Athena and he was secretly elated to be a witness to the transformation that all three were undertaking.

The first time Athena had tried to nuzzle Kratos’ face, Kratos had pulled his head back to stare at her with what Charlie could only assume was confusion and indignation. She had let out the most pitiful whine and Charlie could practically hear her begging Kratos to come back down to her level. He couldn’t help but chuckle as the dragon huffed in defeat and bent his head to allow the lion to nuzzle their noses together. He could make out the glare Kratos cut towards him but Charlie was beginning to realize those looks didn’t hold as much heat as they used to; the dragon really was starting to go soft. Well, soft was a relative term, especially when it came to dragons.

***

Athena wasn’t ever meant to be a permanent fixture in the sanctuary when they had originally taken her in, they thought to make her healthy enough to survive a transfer to a facility better catered to her needs; but after her sudden bonding with Kratos, no-one was volunteering to tell the dragon that. 

After two years of housing Athena, the head of their compound, Benjamin, tried to have her removed from the sanctuary. The dragon keepers felt differently, however, and refused to have anything to do with her removal. Quite a few dragon keepers told him to do it himself if he felt that strongly about it, but they wouldn’t be risking their limbs to separate them. The remaining few didn’t really care either way. He tried threatening people’s jobs, but when no-one stepped up, he was forced to deal with the situation himself.

Benjamin had stalked toward the enclosure, and everyone gathered around as he opened the gate and Charlie remembered hearing him mutter about incompetent employees. Benjamin pulled his wand from his pocket, and moved toward the duo. As soon as Kratos noticed the wand, he bristled and moved into a defensive position in front of Athena. Benjamin tried to distract him by transfiguring a few dogs from rocks that lay in all the enclosures for just that purpose. After nipping and yapping at Kratos, the dogs ran to the other side of the enclosure. 

Ignoring the trick, Kratos blew a column of fire towards Benjamin who jumped out of the way just in time. With a mighty roar, the mighty dragon charged right at him and he only avoided being trampled by apparating outside of the gate as soon as he scrambled to his feet. Kratos spit a few more streams of fire towards Benjamin before he turned around in triumph, and crossed the yard back to Athena’s side. 

With a sigh of defeat, Benjamin muttered, “she better not cause a problem,” as he walked away.  
  
***  
  
It had been five years since Athena found her way to them and four and a half since she moved permanently into Kratos’ enclosure. She hadn’t left Kratos’ side since and Kratos protected her any time he deemed someone or something was threatening her. 

And so, nearly every lunchtime, Charlie could be found in his usual spot watching his two favourite creatures. Just as he was about to bite into his sandwich, he heard familiar laughter behind him. Turning towards the sound, a smile spread across his face as the owner of that beautiful noise made her way towards him. 

Swinging herself up onto the fence next to him, she pushed her bushy hair behind her shoulder and asked, “how did I know I would find you here?”

“I may be a bit predictable,” he replied with a grin.

Scooting over to snuggle into his side, Hermione replied, “There is nothing wrong with a little predictability. I have had way too much excitement to last a lifetime already.”

“So says she who sits on the fence of a dangerous dragon’s enclosure,” Charlie teased.

Leaning his cheek on top of her head, Charlie thought back on the past five years. From the moment Hermione had stumbled onto the grounds to now, he couldn’t believe the path that his life had taken. That her life had taken. When he had first met this woman, when she was just a strong-willed girl intent on smacking some knowledge into his youngest brother, he never would have thought they would end up here.

“You know why these two are my favourite, right?” Charlie asked softly as he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer to him.

“You mean it isn’t because you are the only one they will let near them?” Hermione joked.

With a small chuckle, Charlie replied, “That is part of it. But no, the main reason is; they remind me of us. Even before we became a couple, Athena reminded me of you. She looked so broken when she first came here but I could see the strength beneath, the determination to not let whatever she had gone through make her any less than she was meant to be.” As he turned his head to look into Hermione’s eyes he continued, “I saw the same strength and determination in you.”

“Charlie, I hexed you the day I stumbled into you. I thought you were trying to kill me and my fight or flight response said fight to the death.”

“Yeah, that’s true. But, Hermione, you were delirious, dehydrated, almost dead. I can’t blame you for anything you did that day. I felt so bad for knocking you out but I knew you were going to hurt yourself if I didn’t do something.” Thinking back to that day Charlie whispered, “You were so small. You’ve always been such a tiny thing and when I saw all the weight you had lost, I worried that you wouldn’t recover.”

Leaning up to kiss his cheek she replied, “You’ve taken care of me from the moment I got here. Even when I didn’t want your help, you were always there to offer it. It didn’t matter how distant I was with you, you didn’t care about the hurtful things I yelled at anyone close enough to hear. You were such a steady, reassuring presence. I will always be thankful to you for giving me the distance I needed to sort through everything that had happened.”

With a contented sigh, Hermione laid her head on Charlie’s shoulder and continued, “I’m just thankful that everything I went through… that it brought me here to you. If I had to go through it, at least I got you at the end of it all.”

Wrapping his arms tighter around her, Charlie nuzzled into the side of her head and confessed, “I always felt like I was running in circles. I was meant to be here but I didn’t know why. Now I know I was waiting for you. Life has a purpose for me again, more than it has since I realised I wanted to work with dragons.”

The couple spent the afternoon there, watching the unusual pairing, even as they watched the sun settle behind the mountains. This might have been their favourite enclosure, their favourite spot, but the most important thing it was, was it was theirs. 

Life would never be perfect, but for Charlie, this was as perfect a moment as any could be.

**Author's Note:**

> Love and luck to you all!!! <3<3
> 
> [Come find me on tumblr, though I don’t use it much yet](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/scarycat23)


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